Stephen BROWN (1659-1677)

Memorial Day is a time to remember those who have served in the armed forces to protect the freedoms we too often take for granted. This past year, I’ve had occasion to learn that a number of my maternal Brown ancestors (descended from JOHN BROWN ~1595-1686) served in the Army in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War I.

Before these more or less organized armed conflicts, the Brown men joined other early settlers of New England in fighting the indigenous inhabitants of the area who were trying to protect and preserve their own way of life from the encroaching settlements.

As I discussed in a previous post, STEPHEN BROWN, John’s youngest child, was killed at the age of 18 in King Philip’s War on June 29, 1677. The battle took place at Black Point in Scarborough, Maine. Given that I now live less than two hours away from Scarborough, I thought it would be fitting this Memorial Day to go see the site where the battle in which Uncle Stephen [10 steps] was killed took place:

As the men marched in two or three files, the land gave way to an expanse of
marshland on their left, while the land rose before and to the right of them. It
took less than half an hour to march to the vicinity of Moore’s Brook, a small
waterway that led down to the marsh. They were about two miles from the safety
of the garrison, finding themselves upon an open plain—a bush here and there to
break up the landscape.¹

Scarborough, Maine, taken May 28, 2017

Scarborough, Maine, taken May 28, 2017

As the men started crossed over Moore’s Brook and started up the hill on the other side, the Indians attacked. . . . The war whoop, which today seems relegated to myth, was very real and, for those less resolute soldiers, must have struck them with terror. Up came the Indians from behind the bushes and up from the marshland to their left, across the across the plain from their right. What had started as pursuit of a few Indians turned into a full pitched battle.

The initial slaughter on the side of the English must have been horrific.
Lieutenant James Richardson was cut down soon after the first volley along with
others of his men. English and friendly Indians fell wounded or dead; others tried
to carry the wounded to safety, but shelter was two miles away and they were
facing an enemy that knew the territory well. Some badly wounded English found
ways to hide.

. . . .
Swett, showing great courage, rallied what men he could again and again,
and made a torturous retreat towards the garrison on the neck. The rout had
turned into a tremendous defeat and by the time Swett was within sight of the
garrison, he had suffered many wounds and was bodily taken by the Indians and
hewn to death. Of the nearly one hundred men who left the garrison, less than
half a dozen came back without a scratch. Nineteen out of twenty of Major
Clarke’s men were cut down. A doctor treated those who returned wounded. Fifty
to sixty of the New England forces were dead or mortally wounded, including
eight friendly Indians.²

After 340 years, some marshland still remains at Black Point, but the encroachment continues, with much of the site now given over to a golf course, a yacht club, and upscale oceanfront homes.

Black Point Today, taken May 28, 2017

Black Point, Taken May 28, 2017

The final image of Black Point I’ll leave you with is this one, which just seems wrong to me. I’m unsure which aspect of Black Point’s history it trivializes the most–perhaps history itself?

Black Point, Taken May 28, 2017

¹ Sumner Hunnewell, “‘The Battle at Moore’s Brook, Scarborough, Maine, June 29, 1677,’” Lane Memorial Library, accessed May 7, 2017, http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/military/mooresbrook.htm.

²Hunnewell, “‘The Battle,” Lane Memorial Library.

kingphillip

Asa Brown’s history of the family indicates that all five of John and Sarah’s sons were involved in conflicts with the Indians:

If we may put confidence in tradition, all five of his sons were engaged in the conflicts with the Indians, but with respect to three of them, it is certain. During King Philip’s War in 1676, John and Thos. Brown were among those to whom Hampton was to pay certain sums for military services, as may be seen by the record of expenses in that war, still preserved at Boston, and they seem to have been under Major Appleton. In 1677, Stephen, the youngest son, being but 18 years of age, enlisted, and accompanied the expedition to the eastward, and in the unfortunate battle at Black Point, when 60 out of 90 men lost their lives, he was killed on the 29th of June, 1677.

The Court of Middlesex County at Cambridge, on the 28th of September following, granted administration to “John Poor of Charleston on the estate of his brother-in-law, Stephen Brown, lately slain by the Indians at Black Point”, &c.¹

“The Battle at Moore’s Brook, Scarborough, Maine, June 29, 1677” by Sumner Hunnewell provides a detailed accounting of the battle in which Stephen Brown was killed. The article, which appeared in the August 2003 issue of The Maine Genealogist, was prompted by ‘“[t]he rediscovery of a 1677 casualty list of men wounded and killed in Maine’s last pitched battle of the King Philip’s War.”²

Stephen is mentioned twice in the article:

Only one man from Swett’s town of Hampton was recorded to have accompanied him. STEPHEN BROWN was a teenager probably living with his widowed father, a first settler and prosperous landowner in Hampton. It may have been a shortlived but merry meeting for Stephen and John Parker of Andover. Stephen’s older sister had married John’s oldest brother. Some (if not all) of Stephen’s brothers were soldiers during the war and now it was his turn to play the man.³

STEVEN [sic] BROWN died and like his commanding officer would no longer return to his beloved Hampton.⁴

You can find a link to “The Battle of Moore’s Brooke” on the Lane Memorial Library’s website: http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/military/doleful2.pdf.

After finding a 21st-century perspective on King Philip’s War, I was interested to see what a 19th-century historian had to say. I found Pictorial History of King Philip’s War by Horace Wentworth, published in 1851 with the somewhat overwrought subtitle, Comprising a Full and Minute Account of All the Massacres, Battles, Conflagrations, and Other Thrilling Incidents of That Tragic Passage in American History.

Imagine my surprise at the view of King Philip presented in the book’s introduction:⁵

introkingphillip

I think the last sentence says it all, don’t you?

¹Asa Warren Brown, “From the Exeter News Letter, October 27, 1851: The Hampton Brown Family” (unpublished manuscript, Personal Papers of Ronald Dalrymple Brown, n.d.), 1-2.

² Sumner Hunnewell, “‘The Battle at Moore’s Brook, Scarborough, Maine, June 29, 1677,'” Lane Memorial Library, accessed May 7, 2017, http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/military/mooresbrook.htm.

³Hunnewell, “‘The Battle,” Lane Memorial Library.

⁴Hunnewell, “‘The Battle,” Lane Memorial Library.

⁵Daniel Strock and William Croom, Pictorial History of King Philip’s War: COMPRISING A FULL AND MINUTE ACCOUNT OF ALL THE MASSACRES, BATTLES, CONFLAGRATIONS, AND OTHER THRILLING INCIDENTS OF THAT TRAGIC PASSAGE IN AMERICAN HISTORY. (Boston: Horace Wentworth, 1851).